Millennials are losing their cool

How marketers are exploiting an entire generation’s fear of adulting.

There comes a point in every woman’s life when she has to give up on jeans. Not on wearing them altogether — though that’s the dream — but on trying to keep up with whatever jeans trends are in style. Low-rise or high-rise? Skinny or straight-legged or flared?

Millennials may not be there yet on pants, or at least that’s what I, as a millennial, tell myself. But we’re getting close.

We’re constantly cycling through fashion and cultural trends that supposedly separate millennials from their younger Gen Z counterparts — how each generation parts their hair, where they put their hands when they dance, how they tuck their shirts in. The latest iteration of this back-and-forth is the generational debate over socks. Per TikTok, millennials date themselves by wearing short ankle socks instead of longer ones that come up closer to the calf. Ultimately, this isn’t really about socks (though good luck with those tan lines, kids!). Rather, it signifies the uncomfortable fact of increasing age and all that comes along with it. The socks are a reminder that time comes for everyone, and in the era of social media, the ticking clock is online and in your face. The internet is fueling the millennials vs. Gen Z discourse, but underlying it is something deeper: millennials raging against the dying of the light. And there’s money to be made from this fear of aging — because there always is.

“Millennials are trying to cope with getting old, and they are the first generation that is kind of getting old on display because we are in a hyperconnected world,” said Valeria Penttinen, an assistant professor of marketing at Northern Illinois University who focuses on digital and social media.

Aging can be anxiety-inducing. Wrinkles and aches and pains are signs that our bodies are decaying, manifestations of the reality that we’re marching toward the Big Scary that is death. Our society puts a premium on youth, and as people get older, they’re viewed as irrelevant, invisible, and obsolete. Next time you’re at the pharmacy, take a stroll down the greeting-card aisle. You’ll find a bunch of birthday cards with jokes about aging — LOL, you’re getting slow, senile, irrelevant, asexual, incapable, grumpy.

“A lot of those stereotypes are very deeply ingrained within all of us so that we almost sort of mistake them for truth,” said Julie Erickson, a clinical psychologist in Toronto who focuses on adults and older adults and a coauthor of “The Aging Well Workbook for Anxiety and Depression.”

To alleviate some of our anxieties around aging, we try to keep up with the times. We update our wardrobes, consume the latest culture, and stock up on endless skincare products. Essentially, we attempt to spend our way to eternal youth and beauty. For brands, millennials’ existential dread represents a lucrative opportunity to sell, especially in an era when fads cycle through faster than ever.

“If we look at instincts that come along with feeling scared — that’s when our fight, flight, freeze response kicks in,” Erickson said. “One aspect of that response is the fight response, which gets us mobilized and activated to try to do things to defend against a perceived threat. That can include throwing money at a quote, unquote, problem, trying to spend your way into alleviating some of your fears.”

The best example of this is probably the antiaging industry, which makes billions of dollars a year trying to convince us we can achieve the impossible: staying young forever. The message isn’t exactly that you’re not supposed to get older; it’s just that you’re not supposed to look like it. Age like J.Lo, basically, and blow a bunch of money on creams and injections that keep wrinkles at bay.

“There’s definitely a ’40 is the new 30′ vibe, for better or worse, if only because millennials are more obsessed with health and wellness,” said Michael Miraflor, the chief brand officer at Hannah Grey, a venture-capital firm.

The beauty industry is hardly the only one that capitalizes on the unfeasible pursuit of youth. So much of consumerism depends on novelty — the latest fitness craze or fashion trend or musical artist. Much of that novelty hinges on new generations and the interests and inclinations of young people, namely, the 18-to-34 demographic marketers so highly covet. For millennials, it’s awkward to age out of that demo and no longer be the hot, new thing. It’s jarring to realize Justin Timberlake’s new tour and Usher’s Super Bowl performance are nostalgia plays.

The struggle to stay young means that many millennials are still trying to chase the hot, new thing. Sure, they may not want to dress exactly like the kids these days, but they wouldn’t mind shaving five or 10 years off by wearing looser jeans or taller socks or a baggier T-shirt. Your birth certificate may say you’re 33, but your sneakers don’t have to. It’s tempting to try to hold on, especially with an influencer online explaining to you how to do it.

“Millennials are having an existential sort of crisis with regard to their loss of the grip on youth culture,” Claire Tassin, a retail and e-commerce analyst at Morning Consult, said. “It’s really beneficial for brands that at least the online discourse has millennials looking to Gen Z for trends. Because if they can sell all of us the same stuff, that’s more cost-efficient.”

Jean Twenge, a psychologist and the author of “Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents — and What They Mean for America’s Future,” pointed out that generations realizing they’re not the young trendsetters anymore is not new. Gen X used to be “the kids,” and before then, boomers. But social media does really put the issue on overdrive and has warped millennials’ shift into the has-beens.

“Social media really ramps up the generational conversation and, sometimes, the generational conflict, whether that’s over serious issues, like the economy and student loans, or things like fashion and consumer products,” she said. Sometimes, the chatter can be fun — it’s not that deep that your side part means you’re over 30. “It’s also somewhat mortifying when you realize that you’re on the wrong side of the trend, and you have that constant reminder in your TikTok or Twitter feed,” she added.

The internet makes it easier to keep up with what’s going on coolnesswise and to know whether you’re in or out. In the past, older people lost touch with youth culture because they didn’t really see it in their day-to-day, but now, every shift in style is blasted right into millennials’ feeds.

“Because of social media, because we can see what’s new, what’s trending, we can adapt our behaviors a bit easier,” Penttinen said.

The nature of internet culture, much of which was created by millennials, puts a unique bent on the discourse and how creators and influencers address millennials. For a generation raised on a sense of irony and mockery, poking fun at their uncoolness can be an effective play — and maybe even persuade them to give some new trend a shot to stay in the loop.

“I think that the self-deprecation part of it and leaning into it versus trying to make a millennial who’s aging feel better about aging — it’s almost like let’s have some fun with it and not shy away from the fact that you’re entering into another phase of life,” said Harley Block, the CEO and a cofounder of IF7, a brand-consultancy firm that focuses on Gen Z and millennials.

Joel Steckel, a marketing professor at New York University, told me marketers have to talk differently to millennials than they did generations past because the context around them is different — there’s a lot more mistrust of information, they experienced an economic crisis, and the market is more crowded with brands. They think more about what brands say about them to the outside world than what the brand says to them.

“What’s changing more throughout time is the extent to which consumers will use the information that the brand signals to them,” he said. “They’re using it less. They’re using it less with respect to what the brand signals to them and more of what the use of the brand signals to others.”

In some cases, what millennials would like the clothes they wear or the products they use to say about them is that they’re still young.

Social media and shifting contexts are not the only things making millennials’ aging-out experience a bit different from what it was for generations past, and I’m not just talking about the fact that they think everything is about them. (I kid, kind of.) Millennials have been defined by their youth. They were the generation putting off marriage, having children, and buying a home. In the popular narrative, that’s not because they graduated into a recession but because they were splurging on Starbucks. Millennials supposedly needed to be coddled with participation trophies, and whenever they did do something grown-up, they got to call it “adulting.” It feels like no matter how old millennials get — and plenty of them are in their early 40s at this point — the cultural image of the avocado-toast-obsessed 20-something paying back their student loans via a gig job persisted.

Devon Price, a social-psychology professor and author at Loyola University Chicago’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, said millennials were the last generation to grow up with a real set of life milestones they were supposed to hit, and for a lot of them, those checkpoints have taken longer than they’d anticipated.

“The economy completely bottomed out on us just as we were coming into that adulthood that we were told to expect and earn. And I think that gave us a lot of weird neuroses and a sense of arrested development,” Price said. “In a way, we got really attached to an idea of ourselves as perpetually young because we didn’t have those milestones.”

Now, the tables have turned — millennials are no longer “the youngs,” but they’re not quite “the olds,” either because they don’t feel like it or because society doesn’t treat them that way.

“We try to buy our way into looking and seeming young because then we can still feel like it’s OK. It’s still just a big party. We’re still having fun here. We don’t need to mature,” Price said.

Despite the stereotype, many millennials aren’t doing too poorly financially, so it makes sense for companies to try to get their money. Over half of millennials have homes. Many of them have stable and lucrative jobs and solid investment portfolios. Many of them have gotten married and started families — which has forced some acknowledgment of a generational split. Once children come into the picture, some of the youth and trend chasing is diminished.

“One dividing line for a lot of people is whether they have kids. I mean, that’s why we have the whole concept of mom jeans,” Twenge said.

Even with kids, millennials may be more tempted to try to keep up with the times — it’s not just that your child is going to say you dress lame; it’s that they’re going to post their critique on TikTok. So now, Miraflor said, you get millennial dads who are “allowed to be cool and smart and empathetic.”

“The reality of the life milestones of marriage and having children being delayed means that the goalposts of ‘growing up and being an adult’ moves along with that, almost out of necessity,” Miraflor said. “That, compounded with the pandemic that was timed right when many millennials were reaching middle age, means that there is a lot more nuance and texture required for mass millennial marketing. “

There are worse things one could do than buy a new outfit or some beauty cream to feel better about themselves and the process of getting older. Worst-case scenario, you wind up being a living, breathing version of that “how do you do, fellow kids?” meme. It’s embarrassing, but you’ll survive. Best-case scenario, the purchase perks you up for a time, and maybe someone asks for your ID, a serious over-25 thrill. But you can’t spend your way out of aging, as much as corporate America would like you to think you can, unless you’re Gwen Stefani.

I asked Erickson, the psychologist who focuses on aging, for some tips on dealing with getting older that do not involve opening up our wallets. She said the first piece is to unpack what your beliefs about aging are. What’s the narrative you’re telling yourself? That life will get boring, that you’ll be lonely or become irrelevant? Try to look at some exceptions to those beliefs, like Martha Stewart, who was recently on the cover of Sports Illustrated, or people who have had second and third careers.

“Look at your own aging thus far. Are there aspects of being 20 that you’re actually really happy to leave behind?” she said. “Start to look at the evidence from your own life to say, ‘Sure, there’s certain things that maybe have gotten harder or more complicated or difficult, but are there things about my own aging process that have been areas of growth or discovery or developing new strengths?'”

There’s no sugarcoating it: Aging feels scary, and death is terrifying. TikTok and Instagram do make the discourse on all this worse. The jeans thing was inevitable, but the socks thing? Come on. Many of these generational divides are made up anyway. And if you’re a smug Gen Z now, Gen Alpha is coming up right behind you, so be prepared to feel cringe or whatever their word for it is in 5 to 10 years.

Not to sound anti-capitalist here, but it’s also worth remembering who the real enemy is, or not the enemy, per se, but the entity you want to keep an eye on. Gen Z, be nice to your friendly millennial next door, and vice versa. And both of you, be skeptical of that not-so-friendly company advertising to you on TikTok or Instagram or TV. They make money only if you buy something new, and making you feel like you’re falling behind the times or presenting you with a hot, new trend you have to keep up with is a way to accomplish that.

And, hey, once your clothes go out of style, hold on to them even if you swap them out. They’ll probably come back around in 15 years, and you can save yourself some money down the line.